‘Just let me know. If you want to.’ She paused as she was, looking back at him, one eyebrow raised quizzically. Or was it invitingly?
A man’s luck turning is like a favourable tide. One has to make the most of it while it’s there. Brashen drained off the last of his mug and stood up. ‘I’d like that,’ he said quietly. It was true. Whether the offer of a bed included the girl or not, it sounded very good. What was there to lose? He shifted the cindin in his mouth again. It was very, very good.
‘One more round,’ Reller announced. ‘Then we’d better get back to the ship.’
‘Don’t wait for us,’ one of the hands giggled. ‘Head back, Reller. We’ll be along soon enough.’ He started to sag his head down onto his arms.
Reller reached across the table and gave him a shake. ‘None of that, Jord. No passing out here. Once we get to the ship you can drop to the deck and snore like a pig for all I care. But not here.’
Something in his tone got Jord’s attention. He lifted his head blearily. ‘Why’s that?’
Reller leaned across the table. ‘Deckhand from the Tern gave me a warning earlier. You know that Jolly Gal tied up just to the lee of us? Crew had the red-heaves before they got here. They lost seven men. The skipper has been about town for three days, trying to hire on more crew but with no luck. Word is that he’s getting desperate; they got to get out to the grounds. Every day they stay here is likely another week they’ll have to spend hunting. Fingers from the Tern told me our crew would be wise to stick together and sleep on board tonight. One of their hunters has gone missing for two days now, and you know what they think. So when we go back to the ship, we all go back together. Less you want to wake up northward bound on the Jolly Gal?’
‘Crimpers?’ Jord asked in a sort of horror. ‘Working here in Nook?’
‘Where better?’ Reller asked in a low voice. ‘Man don’t come back to his ship on time, no one’s going to stay tied up here to look for him. Easy to lay in an alley, pick off a few tars from a homebound vessel, the poor sots wake up back on the hunting waters. I tell you, this isn’t a town where a sailor should walk about alone.’
Jord abruptly hauled himself to his feet. ‘I’ve had a gut full of these northern waters. No way I’ll even take a chance on that. Come on, fellows. Let’s to the ship.’
Reller glanced about. ‘Hey, where’d Brash go? Wasn’t he sitting over there?’
‘He went with a girl, I think.’ Althea spoke up for the first time. She heard the disapproval in her voice and saw the faces turn toward her in surprise. ‘One I thought was looking at me,’ she added sourly. She picked up her mug, took a sip, and set it down. ‘Let’s go. The beer here tastes like piss, anyway.’
‘Oh, you know what piss tastes like, do you?’ Jord mocked her.
‘Don’t need to. All I need to know is that this stuff smells just like your bunk, Jord.’
‘Aw, a bunk sniffer, eh?’ Jord guffawed drunkenly. The others joined in the laughter and Althea just shook her head. Afloat or ashore, the humour and witticisms were the same. She actually found herself eager to return to the ship. The sooner they sailed from this armpit, the sooner they’d get to Candletown. She pushed back from the table. Jord leaned over to look in her mug. ‘You going to drink that?’ he demanded.
‘Be my guest,’ she told him and turned to follow the others out of the tavern into the storm. From the corner of her eye she saw Jord toss it off and then make a face.
‘Ew. Guess you got the bottom of the cask or something.’ He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and followed.
Outside the storm was still blowing. Althea wondered wearily if it ever did not storm in the forsaken hole. She squinted her eyes into the rain-laden wind that tore at her clothes and hair. In two steps she forgot that she had ever been warm and dry. Back to life as the ship’s boy.
She almost didn’t hear the innkeeper calling from behind her. Reller turned, and when she glanced back to see what he was staring at, she saw the man leaning out the door of his tavern. ‘You Athel?’ he yelled into the storm.
Reller pointed silently at her.
‘Brashen wants you. He’s had a bit much to drink. Come and haul him out of here!’
‘Wonderful,’ she snarled to herself, wondering why he had picked on her. Reller motioned her to go back.
‘Meet us back at the ship!’ he roared into the wind and she nodded. She turned back to the inn wearily. She didn’t look forward to staggering through the storm with Brash leaning on her. Well, this was the sort of task that fell to ship’s boys. If he puked, she’d get to clean that up, too.
Muttering to herself, she climbed the steps and then stepped into the tavern. The keeper motioned towards a door in the back. ‘He’s in there,’ he said disgustedly. ‘Nearly passed out on one of the girls.’
‘I’ll get him out of here,’ Althea promised and dripped her way past the tables and benches of drinkers to the door. She opened it on a dimly-lit chamber. There was a bed, and the tavern maid with her blouse unlaced. The girl was bent over Brashen as Althea came in. She looked up at Althea and smiled helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Won’t you help me?’
Perhaps if Althea had truly been a ship’s boy, she would have been distracted by the girl’s bared breasts and would simply have stepped into the room. She probably would not have stared at Brashen as she did, thinking that he did not look like a man passed out in a bed but rather like a man who had been struck down and then arranged on a bed. In that momentary pause, she caught a flicker of motion to her left. She dodged back, catching the blow on the side rather than on the top of her head. The club crashed into the top of her shoulder as well, numbing her right arm down to her fingertips. She staggered forward with a cry as the man who had clubbed her slammed the door shut behind her.
The girl was in on it. Althea grasped that instantly, and spurred by her pain, she struck the tavern maid in the face as hard as she could with her left hand. It was not her best punch, but the girl seemed shocked as much as hurt. Clutching at her face, she staggered back with a scream as Althea spun to face the man beside the door. ‘You heartless little bastard!’ the man spat, and swung at her. Althea ducked it and sprang for the door behind him. She managed to pull it partway open. ‘Crimpers!’ she shouted with every bit of breath in her body. A white flash of light knocked her to the floor.
Voices came back first. ‘One from the Tern, the one they’ve been looking for. He was tied up in the beer cellar. One from the Carlyle and these two from the Reaper. Plus it looks like there’s a couple more out the back with some earth scraped over them. Probably hit them too hard. Tough way for a sailor to go.’
There was a shrug in the second voice that replied, ‘Well, tough is true, but we never seem to run out of them.’
She opened her eyes to overturned tables and benches. Her cheek was in a puddle of something; she hoped it was beer. Men’s legs and boots were in front of her face, close enough to step on her. She tipped her head to look up at them. Townsmen wearing heavy leathers against the storm’s chill. She pushed against the floor. On her second try she managed to sit up. The movement set the room to rocking before her.
‘Hey, the boy’s coming round,’ a voice observed. ‘What did you hit
